


When Night Doesn't End

by callmecathy



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: (although is it a rescue if the rescuer needs rescuing?), (but really mutual saving), M/M, Near drowning and/or near freezing, Rescues, Somber realizations, implied established relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:04:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmecathy/pseuds/callmecathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I've always been willing to die for our cause, John."<br/>Reese wondered at what point those words, which had initially seemed acceptable, became  unacceptable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Night Doesn't End

**Author's Note:**

> For a Kink-Meme prompt fill by an anonymous OP. Prompt is a bit spoilery, so [you can find prompt here](http://meme-of-interest.dreamwidth.org/1507.html?thread=368355#cmt368355)  
> but I've also provided it at the end.  
> 

Reese was actually rather pleased that the gang leader had resolved to deal with him by driving him out to a bridge and planning on having him shot and dumped in the river.

"John," Brian Montgomery said, as Reese stood with five guns leveled at him beside the railing-- faulty railing, by any indication, it was damp and he could feel the wood-rot beneath his fingers-- "I know a mercenary when I see one. Make yourself some money, take a vacation. Give up Durell's location."

Their latest number, a Miss Irene Durell, was refusing to sell her shop to a crew of local drug dealers wanting to turn it into a strategically-located dead-drop. The best way to deal with the threat was by getting rid of the leader and his enforcers; which was why turn of luck had collected them on a bridge in the dark over a freezing river. It was a situation that accommodated no bullets-- efficient; and minimum loss of life-- assuming they could swim, although Reese was less concerned with that than a certain detective or his business associate might be.

Montgomery was still talking, using lines that had presumably been borrowed from a variety of B-movie scripts.

Reese's breath fanned out as he fixed a stare over a point above the ring leader's shoulder. He'd already catalogued the positions of the others: two on the left, one on the right, Montgomery's personal muscle behind him. He judged that it would take forty seconds to haul them over the railing.

When Montgomery hit the mandatory _I don't want anyone else to get hurt_ he got moving.

He caught Montgomery by the arm and sent him flailing through the rails, ducked the henchman's punch and got him in a lock that took the brunt of the bullets sent his way. The next two were even easier-- they didn't want to let go of their guns, so the guns went with them into the river. Reese was turning towards the last one when a car came skidding onto the bridge. Reese stood to the side, headlights puddling across the boards, a hand raised to shield his eyes.

The men stepped out in one smooth unit. The man in front-- a slight silhouette, it was all he could make out with the shadow from the light-- stopped a few paces away. "Jeremy Ramsey." He must have known better not to offer his hand as part of the introductions.

Two men flanked him; another two stepped beside Reese. He kept his body still, relaxed. He realized, fairly dully at this point, that he'd been wrong about Montgomery.

Ramsey peered over the edge of the bridge. Fifteen feet down. "I'd be somewhat upset over what you did to my Lieutenant, but it would be dishonest not to admit that I hadn't planned on replacing him myself."

Reese gave him a blank look. "Have a feeling you're going to ask me the same thing he asked when I threw him over."

Ramsey nodded, unperturbed. "I do, naturally." He raised his hand.

A car door opened.

Reese couldn't see past the blinding lights but he heard it, a familiar sound that clenched something deep in his gut: an uneven tread.

Finch had a bruise on his cheek and a gash above his eye, his limp was heavier than Reese had ever seen it and suddenly he was thinking of things a lot more lethal than tossing people into cold waters.

One of Ramsey's thugs propelled Finch forward.

"Now," Ramsey said, swiftly positioning the gun against Finch's head, "Where is Miss Duvall?"

Finch met his eyes. And he looked-- direly calm, which was wrong-- wrong, because Finch didn't have the right to look that calm facing death when his life was Reese's anchor.

Dust motes spun absently in the bright lights.

Ramsey pressed the barrel in hard enough to leave bruises.

"John," Finch said, very quietly, "it's okay."

Except Finch should well know at this point that there was only one choice Reese could make. "31st and James Street." Reese said.

Ramsey's teeth glinted off the half-light. "Very good." Reese felt a shift as the men flanking him moved, jerked his arms in front of himself and the hard bite of handcuffs as they locked his wrists together. Ramsey's chin came down in a nod.

Finch's panicked _no_ as Reese was falling backwards, a dull rush of air-- over quicker than he'd have imagined-- and then cold.

It hit him harder than the sedan in the Moscow streets or the fist of the Turkish enforcer.

Darkness and suffocating and the rushing pound in his ears, pressure throbbing against his head. He kicked his legs and broke the surface. It was so dark there was a disorienting lack of up or down. The cold struggled to keep him immobilized; he had to remind himself to breathe. He was sucking in oxygen when he caught a  mouthful of water, choking on it when he went under again.   

Reese slammed into something hard: a rock. He grappled for it with his cuffed hands, managed to throw his arms around it.

The shore was some thirty feet away, a dark line against more black-- although it could have been a crest in the water, he wasn't sure.

Reese ground the cuffs against the rock, searching for a sharp edge; but it was smooth, slick and edgeless.

Already, he could feel his body giving in to the cold. The shivers racking the length of his frame, a sluggishness moving through him with vague offers of oblivion. Maybe he'd underestimated the potential of water in winter in New York, and maybe it didn't matter whether or not he could get the restraints off because the cold was going to kill him first.

He never stopped waiting. Waiting for the other shoe to drop on their "sooner than later" borrowed time.

" _Reese! John!_ "

A dark shape, drifting towards him.

"Here." Reese called.

Rough paddling and coughing and then Finch's fingers scrabbling desperately against Reese's jacket, struggling to keep the current from pulling him forward. "Can't--"

Reese wanted to grab onto him but his arms were flung round the rock. "Hold onto me."

He felt an arm encircle his waist, then a hand finding purchase on his shoulder. Clinging to him with their legs tangled round each other's and Finch's body pressed against Reese's, cold and warm.

And it was the rooftop again. A bomb vest and a clock ticking down to nothing except it wasn't, not really, Finch had been beside him then and he was beside him now and just like before all the clocks had stopped.

It had scared him, afterwards, remembering the exact moment on the roof when it had hit him in one blazing jolt: the sheer rightness of it.

It didn't scare him now.

"Montblanc." Finch coughed out. One of his arms eased off Reese; he shifted, breath brushing raggedly against Reese's neck.

Reese felt something being pushed into his hand.

His fingers were so cold he could barely feel them. But it was a Montblanc, engraved with trademarks, exquisitely designed. Altogether too long to maneuver. He snapped it in half.

He angled the sharp end of the fountain pen into the lock and swiveled it around; it took him far longer than it ever had, but then the cuffs were slipping under the surface and the tension restraining Reese's arms disappeared.

"Can you swim?" He asked, loud against the noise of the water.

"Never spent much time in the pool."

Reese grabbed Finch and hung onto him as he started kicking. Every movement burning like fire, the cold sunk deep into his bones, his coat dragging against the current, he had to give up breathing because he didn't have the energy to inhale.

Thirty feet, twenty.

There was a bright spot of light gathering in the center of his vision.

Ten.

The water tugged at his legs insistently, pulling him back. Reese tightened his grip on Finch's arm and wondered if he could possibly propel him far enough to reach the shore alone.

Except it wasn't a light behind his eyes-- it was real. The beam of a flash light. A heavy splash of footsteps grew louder as Fusco's grumbling became audible.

A hand slid beneath Reese's arm and heaved him forward. The next minutes spun, mutters and splashes and jarring movement, then the clean grit of ground beneath him.

"Finch--" Reese raised his head. "Where--?"

 "I've got him, I've got him." A body crumpled beside Reese, one pointy elbow jabbing into his side. He didn't care.

"Should get paid for this crap." Fusco muttered. "I'm ruining my best suit."

Finch coughed, struggling to sit up. Reese eased a hand beneath his back. "I'll buy you a new one," Finch said, breathless and giddy. "Would you prefer Armani or Gucci?"

Fusco loomed over them, looking impossibly disapproving.

"How did you find us?" Reese asked.

"The professor here called me after he got snatched. Carter and I traced the signal, caught up with the crew at the bridge. Ramsey told us you two slipped." He frowned.

Reese could feel Finch's shivers. Could feel his own, stuttering out his breaths. "They pushed you." He said to Finch, hard enough to make Fusco twitch.

Finch's face went blank, chagrined. "Not exactly, no."

"What do you mean 'not exactly'?"

"To be perfectly _exact_ , I jumped."

"' _Why?_ "

Finch gave Reese a look dueling exasperation and disappointment.

"You said you couldn't swim _._ "

"He can swim," Fusco said, leaning down and hauling them both to their feet. He pushed them towards the dim shape of a car. "Brothers and the deep end of a pool, yeah?"

Finch glanced at him.

Fusco's shoulders went up. "Coffee break. We compared notes."

Reese didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

"Stay here." Fusco shoved the keys into Reese's hands. "Gotta go fish out the rest of Ramsey's people-- cleaning up your mess, again." He paused, and looked-not-looked at Finch. "About the suit. Never mind. Glad you two made it out."

Reese sighed. "Thanks, Lionel."

His footsteps crackled on the gravel as he walked into the darkness.

Reese fumbled with the door handle, felt his body starting to crash. The adrenaline and the cold had culminated into a toxic mix and the air hovered around them, dangerous and unbalanced, as if the night was going to flip on its end.

Getting the key into the ignition took more coordination.

He missed once, twice.

There was a blackout hovering just behind his eyes.

"Brothers?" He asked, trying to focus.

Finch was shaking in the passenger seat. He pried at the buttons to his drenched coat. "...when I was nine years old, my brothers decided I needed to learn how to swim... so they tossed me into the deep end of the pool." Finch gave up, letting his hands fall to his sides.

Reese got the key in.

"Took me a few minutes... but I figured it out." He said it mechanically, and there was a note of amusement in his voice that clearly meant it was a lie.

Another mismatched piece of the puzzle to return to on further notice.

He turned on the ignition.

Heat rolled out in a wave, forceful enough to send the droplets on his forehead rolling down his nose. The real shivers started almost instantly. Shuddering through his body, clenching his muscles, uncontrollable as a seizure with his pulse clattering underneath his skin. In the corner of his eye he could see Finch huddled around the air vents and he thought about how close it had been-- how fast the stakes had changed from a few idiot drug dealers to losing everything.

He waited it out until the shivers had subsided. "That was stupid, Harold."

Finch's head raised. "I was going to tell you the same thing. I've always been willing to die for our cause, John."

Reese wondered at what point those words, which had initially seemed acceptable, became unacceptable. The words had been resigned, then; reckless, now.

"Not good enough." He swiped one of the air vents on his side and directed it towards Finch.

He wasn't sure whether it was anger or the radical temperature differences that brought a swift high flush to Finch's skin. "You can't possibly have imagined that I'd allow you to drown."

He said it like a fundamental truth and it scared the hell out of Reese.

Reese wanted to shake him. Argue till the morning came. Wanted that precarious thrum of close-calls and almosts out from underneath his skin. And Finch was looking at him, bland enough that it was reflecting everything Reese felt back at himself.

_We walk in the dark, she'd said._

_Doesn't mean we have to walk in it alone, he'd said._

It occurred to Reese that that decision he'd made on the bridge had been just as inevitable as the one Finch had made, moments later.

He let his shoulders slump. Sometimes he wanted to curse Finch for giving him a reason to live and telling him that they had to die.

But that was just another one of the fundamental truths that they shared-- so all Reese did was the only thing he possibly could. He eased to the side, brushing his shoulder against Finch's. Finch leaned into him, tilting his head against Reese's shoulder as far as limitations would allow.

The heat spanned out, casting over them like a shadow.

Finch's eyes tipped closed. "You don't leave people," He said, echoing words from the rubble of a bank vault, "I don't leave you."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt:  
>  _Someone pushes Reese into the water while his hands are tied, stopping him swimming to safety. Finch doesn't hesitate - he jumps in right after him, and saves him, just as Fusco arrives and hauls the two of them out. John had just assumed Finch either didn't know how to swim or wouldn't be able to, and Harold tells him the story he told Carter, while John dries off._
> 
> (Slight modification about Finch's swimming abilities on my part)
> 
> A/N: And just my personal headcanon, but Finch _does_ buy Fusco a new suit, and Reese _does_ buy Finch a new pen.


End file.
